Fewer high-quality Army recruits: As war needs rise, exam scores drop By Bryan Bender and Kevin Baron, Globe Correspondent | June 1, 2007
WASHINGTON -- The percentage of high-quality recruits entering the Army is the lowest in 10 years, an indication that the force is struggling to attract top-grade enlistees -- and a troubling sign for the Pentagon, which is waging wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and plans to add 90,000 ground troops to its ranks within the next five years.
Over the past decade, the percentage of top-level recruits who enlisted in the Army was mostly consistent, dipping slightly at the end of the 1990s before spiking in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But since 2003 -- the same year the US invaded Iraq -- the Army has steadily taken in more recruits that the force itself considers "non-high quality."
Last year, nearly 40 percent of those who joined the Army had below-average verbal and math scores on the Armed Forces Qualification Test, a mandatory exam that helps the military determine a recruit's aptitude and mental proficiency. In 2003, the Army accepted only 28.9 percent of the low-scoring recruits, but that percentage gradually began to rise in subsequent years, according to Army statistics.
The data, compiled by the Army Recruiting Command in Fort Knox, Ky., also shows a steady decline in the number of recruits who have graduated from high school. In 2006, nearly one in five incoming soldiers did not have high school diplomas, which the service asserts "is the best single predictor of 'stick-to-it-iveness,' " a highly valued trait.
Before the Iraq war began, the percentage of Army recruits who graduated high school surpassed 90 percent.
Despite repeated requests, senior officials in the Army and the Pentagon declined interviews for this story. Military officials have asserted that it still enlists quality volunteers; for example, the Pentagon asserts that, as a whole, at least 90 percent of all new recruits are high school graduates.
Testifying before the Senate earlier this month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that -- despite a shrinking pool of applicants in general and four years of grim headlines from Iraq -- the Army is still attracting thousands of capable young men and women to its enlisted ranks.
"These are people who are enlisting knowing exactly what they're getting into and knowing exactly where they're going to end up, having to fight," Gates said when asked about Army recruiting. "It's an extraordinary tribute to the quality of these young people in America today that they are willing to do this."
In a four-page paper subtitled, "Myths Versus Facts," the Defense Department argues that "nearly two-thirds" of all military recruits "are drawn from the top half of America in math and verbal aptitudes -- strong determinants of training success and job performance."
Those figures, compiled by the conservative Heritage Foundation, refer to the armed forces at large, including the Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force, whose recruits are more likely to have finished high school, according to Defense Department data. The statistics obscure the fact that in 2006, the Army came closer than any time in the past decade to missing its minimum requirement: that 60 percent of each recruiting class scores above average on the test.
The Globe review of Defense Department personnel statistics from 1996 to 2006, including recruits' education levels and their scores on the armed forces entry test, show that the Army is experiencing a downward trend in recruit quality that military analysts suggest will continue for some time.
The number of applicants seeking to enlist in the Army is plummeting, thereby shrinking the pool of qualified applicants. And with the unpopularity of the war, a strong job market, and more high school graduates entering four-year colleges than ever before, the Army is increasingly willing to take anyone who wants to volunteer.
"I think the war is the biggie," said Charles Moskos, a sociologist at Northwestern University and a leading scholar of military culture. "Obviously, people don't want to volunteer for service where people are killed or injured" fighting a widely unpopular war, he said. ...
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Carl
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